Is it possible to smoke incense

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Buy Now. Is Incense Smoke Bad for You? By Catherine Poslusny Contributor. July 20, Incense use throughout the ages No one knows when the use of incense first started. How is incense burned? Can incense smoke contain harmful pollutants? Is incense smoke bad for your lungs? Is incense smoke as bad as tobacco smoke?

However, it is important to note a few things while interpreting these findings: When you burn incense, you are not exposing your respiratory tract to the same concentration of smoke as when you smoke a cigarette. This may play a role in how the different types of smoke affect your lung cells. Only four incense sticks and one cigarette were tested in this study.

This sample size is too small to be able to apply the findings to incense and cigarette smoke as a whole. What are some alternatives to burning incense? Are there ways to reduce the indoor air pollution caused by burning incense? Here are some steps that you can take to help protect yourself from the side effects of habitual incense smoke inhalation: Increase your ventilation —Consider opening windows and doors to improve the airflow in the room in which you are burning incense.

Switch to a safer type of incense —Not all incense is created equally. By choosing incense made from natural, plant-based ingredients without the addition of harmful chemicals, you may be able to decrease the amount of air pollutants released in the smoke.

Consider trying smokeless or low-smoke incense. The effects of incense and cigarette smoke were also compared, and made for some surprising results. Incense burning is a traditional and common practice in many families and in most temples in Asia.

It is not only used for religious purposes, but also because of its pleasant smell. During the burning process, particle matter is released into the air. This can be breathed in and trapped in the lungs, and is known to cause an inflammatory reaction. Not much research has been done on incense as a source of air pollution, although it has been linked to the development of lung cancer, childhood leukemia and brain tumors.

Zhou's team therefore assessed the health hazards associated with using incense smoke in the home. They went one step further by comparing these results for the first time with mainstream studies of cigarette smoke.

Two types of incense were tested. Both contained agarwood and sandalwood, which are among the most common ingredients used to make this product. Tests were run, among others, to gauge the effects of incense and cigarette smoke on Salmonella tester strains and on the ovary cells of Chinese hamsters.

From practical considerations of the health effects, air particulates are usually categorized according to how deep they can penetrate into the human respiratory system. They are too large to enter the human respiratory system, hence causing no immediate threat. Particles in the range 10 to 2. Particles less than 2. Particles less than 0. Since people who are exposed to incense smoke always inhale a complex mixture of both gaseous and particulate products from the incense, it is difficult to single out the health effects of incense particles alone.

So far, there hasn't been any report about the ill effects on human health directly caused by the particles per se in the incense smoke. Epidemiological studies have reported associations between air particulate matter especially the fine particles and several acute health effects, including mortality, hospital admissions, respiratory symptoms, and lung dysfunction [ 20 - 25 ].

The combustion of incense, wood, cigarette, and candles is important or even major sources of residential indoor particulate matter, especially in the 2. Mannix et al. Lin et al. In a study of the indoor air pollution in Taiwan, Liao et al. For indoor particles ranging from 0. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, yet poisonous gas generally formed during incomplete combustion of organic substances, such as hydrocarbons, wood, incense, cigarette, and fossil fuels.

CO combines with haemoglobin much more readily than oxygen, by a factor of —, hence reduces the blood's capacity to transport oxygen. Inhalation of CO in low concentrations can cause headaches, dizziness, weakness and nausea, while high concentrations can be fatal [ 33 ].

Health effects of exposures to sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide can include reduced work capacity, aggravation of existing cardiovascular diseases, effects on pulmonary function, respiratory illnesses, lung irritation, and alterations in the lung's defense system [ 34 ]. Volatile organic compounds VOCs are chemicals that have low boiling points and therefore evaporate easily at room temperature.

Common VOCs include benzene, toluene, xylenes, and isoprene. Chronic symptoms of VOC exposure are: cancer, liver damage, kidney damage, central nervous system damage [ 35 ]. Lee et al. Most materials produce aldehydes and ketones during combustion. Burning incense is also known to generate aerosols and formaldehyde [ 37 , 36 , 40 ]. Lin and Tang investigated the content of particulates in Chinese incense smoke and found that acrolein, formaldehyde and acetaldehyde were predominantly adsorbed on particulates, especially those particulates with size of 3.

Aldehydes are volatile organic compounds typically characterized by their irritating properties, especially the low molecular weight, the halogenated aliphatic, and the unsaturated aldehydes. In addition to irritating skin, eyes and the upper respiratory tract, aldehydes also affect nasal mucous membranes and oral passages, producing a burning sensation, bronchial constriction, choking, and coughing [ 41 ]. Exposures to formaldehyde are of concern because formaldehyde is a potent sensory irritant and is classified as a probable human carcinogen [ 42 ].

Black et al. Epidemiological studies have correlated wood dust and formaldehyde with nasal cancer [ 44 , 45 ]. Wood dust that carries formaldehyde enhances the toxicity of formaldehyde when the wood dust is intercepted and dissolved in water in the nasal cavity [ 46 ]. The smoke emitted by incense burning has been found to contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs [ 7 , 8 , 14 , 47 - 52 ].

In Taiwan, temples are typically heavily polluted by incense smoke, especially during special festivals, such as the Chinese New Year or the birthdays of worshiped gods. In a study of one Swiss church, in which incense was burned, PAHs were found in sedimented dusts, indicating that incense was possibly the most significant source [ 53 ]. It also has been shown that burning incense is associated with increased levels of PAHs in homes [ 47 , 54 ]. In a comparison study of incense burning, Lung and Hu reported that two kinds of incense sticks generated, It appears that different types of incense produce various amounts of PAHs.

In India, diethylphthalate is used extensively in the incense stick industry as a binder of perfumes. It can be emitted into the air during incense burning. Diethylphthalate DEP , used as a plasticizer and a detergent base, is a suspect carcinogen. Sonde et al. The controlled rats received normal diet and plain water. However, significantly altered lipid and enzyme levels in the liver and serum were found in the DEP-fed group. It was concluded that DEP alone leads to severe impairment of lipid metabolism coupled with toxic injury to the liver [ 57 ].

Like second hand smoke, pollutants emitted from incense burning in a close environment are harmful to human health. As mentioned above, particulate matters, and some of volatile organic compounds, musk ketones, musk xylenes, and musk ambrette, aldehydes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, diethylphthalate DEP are toxic to the lung and allergenic to the skin and eyes. While it is relatively difficult to directly study the effect of incense smoke pollutants on health, several epidemiological studies have suggested that they do cause health problems.

Most obviously, when incense smoke pollutants are inhaled, they will cause respiratory dysfunction. In , Sturton et al reported a high incidence of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Hong Kong in male patients who burn incense as compared with the other malignant cases that were used as controls.

They found that In order to determine whether indoor environmental factors affected respiratory dysfunction, Yang et al. They found that, among the other chemical factors, incense burning and mosquito repellant burning were significantly associated with cough symptoms [ 59 ]. Since people working in temples may be exposed to high levels of air pollutants from incense burning, Ho et al.

They concluded that working in a temple increases the risk for the development of acute irritative respiratory symptoms, including nose and throat irritation [ 60 ]. The adjusted odds ratios calculated for acute irritative symptoms in temple workers relative to the controls are 4. Furthermore, chronic cough symptoms were significantly more common among the temple workers than those from the non-incense burning church, the control group.

Alarifi et al. At the end of the exposure period, lung tissues were removed and processed for electron microscopy. It was noticed that alveolar pneumocytes of the exposed animals had significant ultrastructural changes which involved the cell organelles and surfactant material of type II cells.

Neutrophil infiltration into the alveolar lumena was found to accompany degenerative and necrotic changes of the alveolar lining cells. Alveolar walls also revealed deposition of collagen fibrils which contributed in its thickening. They concluded that exposure to Ma'amoul incense could induce ultrastructural pulmonary changes which may imply compromised respiratory efficiency [ 61 ]. Similar ultrastructural pulmonary changes have also been reported in rats exposed to Bakhour, an Arabian incense [ 62 ].

It is interesting to note that in several epidemiological studies, incense burning had shown no harmful effect. In their study of the association of indoor and outdoor environmental exposures and physician-diagnosed asthma, Lee et al.

They reported that daily cigarette consumption in families and incense burning at home showed negative effects to the occurrence of childhood asthma. They proposed a possible explanation for their finding; cigarette smoking and incense use might have been decreased in families with children with atopic disease and thus had less atopic asthma [ 63 ].

In another study, Koo et al. They found that there was no association between exposure to incense burning and respiratory symptoms like chronic cough, chronic sputum, chronic bronchitis, runny nose, wheezing, asthma, allergic rhinitis, or pneumonia among the primary school children, their non-smoking mothers, or district matched controls. Incense burning also did not affect lung cancer risk among non-smokers, but it significantly reduced risk among smokers, even after adjusting for lifetime smoking amount.

They suggested a likely explanation for this unexpected finding: incense burning was associated with certain dietary habits, i. Thus, their results indicate that diet can be a significant confounder of epidemiological studies on air pollution and respiratory health [ 64 ]. They found that incense burning was a risk factor for elevated cIgE [ 65 ]. Lead exposure could stimulate the IgE production [ 66 ]. The concentrations of lead have been detected at 0. It is speculated that lead emitted from incense burning could be absorbed on PM 2.

However, the authors have not yet proved the relationships between incense burning, cord blood lead, and cord blood IgE levels [ 65 ]. As indicated in the previous section, incense smoke cause morphological changes of alveolar pneumocytes and infiltration of neutrophils into alveolar lumena in experimental rats [ 61 , 62 ].

Activation of resident and recruited inflammatory cells can lead to elaboration of a plethora of mediators, culminating in airway inflammation and remodeling. Th2 cytokines by regulating IgE class switching as well as inducing humoral immunity, would aggravate allergic respiratory disease. While cytokines such as IL-4 and IL are crucial to production of IgE by B lymphocytes, others such as IL-5 are essential to eosinophil hematopoiesis, activation and survival in tissue. Numerous factors, including incense smoke, may contribute to the development of the Th1-Th2 imbalance [ 72 - 75 ], and the interaction between the innate and adaptive immune systems may lead to inflammatory changes and airway remodeling [ 76 ].

Incense burning smoke has also been associated with dermatological problems. Hayakawa et al. A 48 h closed path testing revealed perfume in the incense was the cause.